Being born in 2004, I grew up as a Disney fiend. My mom started me early on Micky Mouse holiday videos, Disney Channel, and even took me and my brother to Disney World when I was 10. Some of my favorite shows Jesse and Austin and Ally. Jesse's whole world is in New York so obviously Austin and Ally would have to go to them on tour. My guess is that fashionable Emma, the eldest daughter or maybe the sassy young Zuri heard about the upcoming artist performing in New York City and just had to be there. Jesse, of course, would try to get tickets for Emma or Zuri and her friends only there's one problem, the tickets are sold out. Emma or Zuri would be devastated and Jesse would try to cheer them up by taking them to the park. While Emma or Zuri calm down Austin and Ally would enter the park and ask about the best local attractions. Emma or Zuri would be so excited to show the star around and beg Jesse to come with them to see the city. They would go to the best places in town and try to make the star feel welcome in the big city. While they were hanging out and getting to know the each other the concert would come up and Emma or Zuri would talk about how all the tickets were sold out. At this point Austin and Ally would offer Jesse and Emma or Zuri backstage tickets for her and her friends. Emma or Zuri would be so excited and thank them and would give them five passes for backstage. When Jesse and Emma or Zuri got home later, she would tell all her siblings who would instantly become excited that they were all going to go to the concert. Emma or Zuri would say the tickets were only for Jesse, her, and her friends to go. This of course would upset the other siblings and would lead to a deep talk with Jesse. Jesse would tell Zuri or Emma that the decision was up to her but how would she feel if her siblings excluded her from going out so she could hang out with her friends. And as the moral of the episode Emma or Zuri would share the 5 tickets with all her siblings and they would go to the concert together.

Growing up with a Wii my favorite Nintendo game was Mario cart. Me and my brother would play the split screen races and use a piece of cardboard taped to the TV screen to separate our views. He would sit on the floor with the cardboard on his head and I would sit just behind him on a chair. We would spend hours racing and trying to beat each other on the racetracks. One day in particular we were racing like normal; I was Princess Daisy, and he was Mario. Whoever, lost had to do the other's chores, and I had no intension on doing dishes. At the end of the last lap, my brother was in first place and I was in second. I had just gotten a blue shell from a mystery cube. It was perfect! During the final stretch on the coconut mall tract I let my blue shell fly, but little did I know my brother had placed down a banana peel! While our characters were in a daze Princess Peach passed us both and won the race. We both ended up doing our typical chores that night but at least we have a fond memory to look back on as young adults.

I stay true to myself by staying grounded to my identity. When I feel like someone or even myself is trying to push me in a direction that isn't for me, I take a step back and really ask myself if I that situation aligns with who I am. If it does, then I proceed forward. But often, when I take this step back and look at the situation as a whole, I'm able to see that it has no benefit for me and my character in the long term. This helps me stay true to who I am and what I believe because I'm able to stop myself from creating the problem before it even happens. I'm really happy that I can stay grounded and true to myself. I feel like having these experiences and self reflections help to make me a stronger and more rounded person and individual.

In March, my boyfriend and best friend almost lost his life to kidney disease. The doctors said that if he had waited to go to the hospital a few days later the hydronephrosis would have permanently damaged his kidney functions. They had to stick a tube in him to relieve the pressure on the organ. They had to do a life-saving surgery month later. The worst part is that he was just recently made homeless after his father threatened to break his neck. He had nowhere to go and his step-mother was threatened to kick him off their insurance if he went to the hospital. I had to watch the athletic, confident guy I knew turn into a broken person that could barely stand because of the pain he felt from the hydronephrosis building in his kidney. I feel like if I hadn't had the audacity to tell him "It will get better if you just get through this" then he wouldn't have made the recovery he's made. Even on the worst days where he couldn't stand and the urine in his bag was as red as blood, I still told him it would get better. He would say that it wouldn't or that he may lose his kidney and have to go on dialysis, but I would say "it hasn't happened yet and I think you'll make a full recovery." Sometimes I didn't believe it myself, but I couldn't help but at least try to make myself believe it because there was no other way to have hope and happiness in such a horrible time. But he got better. His surgery went well, the best it could have gone. After much prayer and tears, he made a full recovery. This has taught me to always hope for the best.

I learned that when you apply yourself to whatever you want to do to the fullest, you can accomplish anything you want to so long as you set realistic goals. This helped change my perspective on how I want to accomplish things. I always put my best foot forward now, even when I don't want to do the task at hand. I do this because I always have my best results when I work on a project that I put everything I had into. So by just doing this I already know that I'm going to have the best results possible! This has significantly changed my life. I always know when going into a project or test that I'm going to do my best and achieve the best score that my ability would allow. This has helped me get rid of test anxiety and helped me improve my quality of life.

I admire the once Haitian slave turned revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture. Toussaint Louverture was born in Saint-Domingue, present-day Haiti as a slave. Although we don't know exactly when he was born it is estimated to be around 1743. We also know that in 1776 he was given his freedom and continued to work for his former master until 1782. But the interesting turn his life takes is in 1791 when Toussaint Louverture started to form his slave rebellion that would later become an entire revolutionary movement with an army of former slaves who fought the Spanish, British, and French and claimed independence for Haiti. He demonstrated leadership to command an entire army, the ability to unite people as people and not just color, the integrity to gain the respect of anyone. He sent men to the UK and US to make valuable trade and improved the economy of the island by letting Haiti stay an export-based economy. He also demonstrated forgiveness that is unimaginable to us. He allowed white former slave owners to keep their land on the condition that anyone who worked for them would be treated equally and paid a fair wage. This is truly remarkable because Toussaint Louverture grew up as a slave being discriminated against by white landowners and masters so his being civil and fair towards the very people that looked down on him is more honorable and eye-opening than anything else. I really look up to Toussaint Louverture because of his honorability, charisma, and leadership skills. After all, it really does take a special character to unite an army of former slaves, fight for freedom, and move society as a whole toward racial equality and acceptance. Toussaint Louverture really is a role model we can all learn from.

The most helpful piece of advice I've heard is "wait a week before you buy it". This is powerful advice because if you don't remember what you wanted to buy at the moment a week from now, then it probably wasn't worth buying in the first place because it wasn't important enough to you for you to remember it. This has helped me cut back on in-the-moment spending. By being able to identify my in-the-moment spending as in-the-moment and not long-term benefit, I'm able to save more money and only buy what I really want with the money I've worked for. By doing this, I also don't have to feel guilty for buying what I really want because I know it's important enough to me that I've remembered it. The advice "wait a week before you buy it" has really helped me to improve not only my financial decision-making but also my appreciation of what I have. Me growing this appreciation for what I already have has helped me become more careful with what I have and maintaining it. For example, my mom got me a really nice pair of leather boots in middle school and luckily my feet haven't grown since so they still fit perfectly. But these boots are still in amazing condition and look almost brand new because every time I wear them out I whip them off afterward and I condition them every year to maintain the leather. This has made me appreciate these boots more and get the most out of the money my mom invested in those boots for me.

We are facing a world that encourages division and hate. We are facing a world in which everyone is out for themselves and believes everyone is against them based on things we can or can't control. We are truly facing a problem by categorizing ourselves and forgetting we are human despite our different experiences and appearances. Nothing will ever be able to change this. We are all born with the same number of dignity and we will all have our chance to die a death that nobody can escape. But this isn't what makes us human. It's the experiences in between this where we live our lives to the fullest to work in the direction of the common interest of unity and peace in a society that makes us humans and separate from animals. Nobody wants to live a life hating and being hated, yet most people, especially people from my generation show no mercy, choosing to have the mentality to categorize and divide ourselves. The only thing anyone can really do is try to remember that we really are all the same. We are not our labels. We are not categories or races. We are not what others tell us we should be or what we need to be. We are not truly divisible. We will always be united to work toward our betterment and the goal of making this world better for our posterity. We should remember, we are human, all of us, every 7.8 billion of us living on this earth. We are human.

My meaning of independence means that I get to explore the person I want to be without being held to the expectations of others. My name is Megan Shaw and my whole life I've struggled to be a social outcast. I've had trouble making friends and in order to be able to make them I've always either had to change who I was or make fun of myself or my weight to be able to get along with people that would otherwise snicker at me in the hall as I walked by. Although I've lost weight now and am still working to get in better shape, this is not where my independence has come from. My independence has come from me accepting who I am and that I don't have to change who I am for others. I can be myself and if others won't accept me for who I am, I can shrug it off knowing I'm better off without people like that in my life anyway. After all, if someone will judge me based on the way I look rather than the content of my character that says more about them than it does about me and I don't have to owe those people the benefit of changing myself just to make them happy!

My family and I never thought about climate change until one day when I was in 8th grade. I had a presentation on what climate change is by a guest speaker. Then I understood that when I left a light on in my closet, or my mom left a fan on, or when my brother stayed in the shower for an hour, or when my dad left the TV on while browsing through his phone, we weren't just wasting electricity and raising the electric bill, we were slowly wasting valuable fossil fuels and putting harmful chemicals into the atmosphere. Ever since then I and my family have become conscious about what we use and how we can affect the world by being mindful. So not only did we lower our electric bill, we're even making a difference in the world, which is an honor and a blessing in itself.

After the loss of my great-grandmother, life hit me in the face. It was March 8th, 2017 that she recovered from the flu and was starting to feel well again. During the time she had the flu, we didn't know if she was going to make it, so when she pulled through and started feeling better everyone was so relieved. But then on March 11th, 2017 she suddenly passed only 3 days after recovering. I was in 7th grade and she was the first person in my close family to pass. Although I knew what death was, I had never had an experience where someone died until then. At her funeral I was inconsolable. I cried at her viewing, I cried during the service, and I cried when they lowered her into the ground during the season's final snow. It sparked in me anxiety and fear I hadn't felt before, and a terror I had never imagined. I developed thanatophobia, a fear of death. Many nights after that I felt a cold coming into my room when I laid there in silence on school nights at 1 AM. It wasn't the weather, instead, it was a sweat from anxiety that turned my skin to ice. No matter how I tossed or turned I would find myself sleepless and depressed refusing to close my eyes for the possibility I wouldn't wake up. So for many weeks which became many months, I repeated this cycle, stranding myself to be alone with my thoughts. These circumstances controlled my life for over a year before I began to question how to reprogram my mind toward being more positive. I figured out that if I controlled my view of reality I, in turn, changed my reality. This positivity helped me form the habit of having gratitude for life and I consciously shifted my intentions from living in fear to living in gratitude. Instead of letting my thoughts control me and break me into tears at night, I would force myself to think of everything I was grateful for. Although there wasn't a lot at first, the small things added up and I started to name bigger things, and soon I wasn't forcing myself anymore. I changed myself and stopped living in my future death so I could enjoy my current reality to its fullest. My great-grandmother's death was horrible and tragic, but in her death, I was able to become the person I am today, and for that, I am grateful.

I hope to impact others by motivating them to do the best thing for them and giving them to best tools and resources available to help them to become the best version of themselves. I hope that my impact on mentoring others will help set an example for them to follow while they are still trying to figure things out. I hope that my mentoring makes others feel motivated and ready to tackle their future challenges and adversities. When I mentor someone, I want to make that person feel safe and comfortable to express their hardships and challenges to me. I want to be able to relate to someone I'm mentoring and show them that I have been through a similar situation. I want this to make them feel like they can take my advice on this and tell them anything I believe would help them through the experience based on what I learned from experiencing it myself.

My favorite piece of art is Debussy's clair de lune. Debussy said "music is the silence between the notes" and this piece truly represents that. Most people may think that clair de lune sounds sad or that it is overly rated garbage from the 17 hundreds as a classmate has told me. But this isn't true. Clair de lune to me is the gradual rise of someone that has fallen. They may have fallen in battle, fallen to them self, or fallen to grief but in clair de lune this person has fallen and begins to rise and make sense of what remains. They must go through sorrow, regret, and rise to rebuild. The sorrow is the silence between the notes. The regret is the slow tempo and lack of movement in the beginning. The rise to rebuild is the gradual pick out of tempo and speed that is panicked and becomes more assertive.

I try to understand people. I try to understand that they have bad days. I try to show others kindness and be considerate to strangers; after all, I don't know what their day has been like or what has happened. I just merely coexist with the world and try to make their day a little better. Being mean, and hateful does nobody any good and everyone tends to have a positive outcome from a positive response to a negative situation so I choose to be the positive. This positivity is never a burden in fact it makes me feel better about myself and helps me with anxiety and builds my confidence. It also helps me make friends with the people that need one the most which I'm extremely grateful for and love to help others and see them get on the right path. Overall, kindness impacts me and the people around me to be a little better and even impact the world.

Finances have always fascinated me. I love money and love knowing how and where to spend it. This being said, I help my friends who are out of school and on their own save and spend so that they'll be prepared for buying winter tires and unplanned expenses. I outline their monthly bills, what has been paid and what hasn't been and have a spreadsheet for both of the friends I help. I also force them to put 100 dollars every month into a separate savings account that they aren't allowed to access without hearing it from me. This may sound harsh but in reality, they wouldn't be saving anything without me and one friend even started putting more then 100 in their account each month so it works! At this point one friend has 925 dollars saved and one has 600 dollars saved. But I don't just make them save I also give them some free spending money because I'm not evil. They never have to worry about their bills as long as they're friends with me. And of course I also save and have 1500 saved for expenses that may occur in my adult future.

"Me going to college" "watching my high school friends live with their parents"

"You get what you give" describes how life is. Nothing is free. Life won't see you standing around and give you the world. If you want the world you must pursue it. You must pursue what you want in life with vigorousness if you want to achieve it. You must pursue friendship with kindness if you want to be shown it. You must do the impossible to make the impossible come to reality. This is the only way life can ever be to us what we want it to be. We must sculpt our lives through our decisions to create what we want for ourselves; even if this means creating something from nothing it all comes from ourselves. What our parents tell us at a young age we can be anything isn't false. It's a matter of putting in the effort to receive what we desire. Give people kindness. Give your career your ambition. Give yourself the love you deserve. Do this and you will get what you give.